ENGLISH troubadour Billy Bragg and American counterpart Joe Henry will play the Grand Opera House, York, on January 24 next year on their 12-date New Year tour.

The transatlantic duo will be promoting Shine A Light – Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad, the newly released album they recorded while travelling across America by train, reinterpreting songs originally made famous by Hank Williams, Lead Belly, The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Glen Campbell, Gordon Lightfoot and more besides.

Like many a British musician before him, Billy Bragg, bard of Barking, singer-songwriter, political activist and musical historian, made no secret of his obsession with the songs and the mythology of the Americas. Especially those of his artistic and philosophical forebear, Woody Guthrie, which led to his late-Nineties series of Guthrie albums, setting the Dustbowl protest singer's previously unrecorded lyrics to new tunes written with the American band Wilco.

Now, in tandem with his friend and collaborator Joe Henry, Bragg has recorded an album that focuses on how the railroad played its part in spreading the songs that gave birth to the rock’n’roll era.

Released on Cooking Vinyl a fortnight ago, Shine A Light is a travelogue collection of 13 railway-themed classic songs recorded in the course of a 65-hour journey across the United States on the Texas Eagle railroad service in March this year.

Bragg and Henry, guitars in hand, boarded a Los Angeles-bound train at Chicago’s Union Station and as it snaked its way along 2,728 miles of track, the pair recorded songs while the train paused to pick up passengers. In waiting rooms and at the track side in St Louis, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Alpine, Texas, El Paso and Tucson, they set up their recording equipment and performed classic railroad songs while keeping half an eye on the train and jumping back on board just before pulling out for the next town.

After four days crossing the country, they pulled into Los Angeles at 4.30am, recording their final song in Union Station accompanied by the first chirping of the dawn chorus. The resulting album captures the varied atmospheres in which the recordings were made, from the close proximity of soft-furnished sleeping cars to the cathedral-like ambience of historic railway stations.

In track order, those songs are: Rock Island Line, previously recorded by Lead Belly and Lonnie Donegan; The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore (Jean Ritchie); The Midnight Special (Lead Belly); Railroad Bill (Riley Puckett); Lonesome Whistle (Hank Williams) and KC Moan (The Memphis Jug Band).

The album continues its rail journey with Waiting For A Train (Jimmie Rodgers); In The Pines (Lead Belly, The Louvin Brothers); John Hartford' Gentle On My Mind (Glen Campbell, Aretha Franklin); Goebel Reeves's Hobo's Lullaby (Woody Guthrie); Sara Carter's Railroading On The Great Divide (The Carter Family); John Henry (Doc Watson) and Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot).

York Press:

Station to station: Billy Bragg and Joe Henry on their travels

"Railroad songs provided the bedrock of American popular music, from Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, to Lead Belly, whose repertoire provided several of the songs for this project," says Bragg. "In this country, Lonnie Donegan’s 1956 hit Rock Island Line sparked the skiffle craze, inspiring a generation of British teens to pick up guitars and form the groups that invaded America in the Sixties, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin."

Growing up in Britain, Bragg had always been aware of this tradition. "But when I travelled to the US, I was surprised to find how few people look to the railroad as a means of transport. With this project, we wanted to explore the transformative power that the coming of the railroad had on the lives of ordinary people by taking these songs back to the places that inspired their creation," he says.

"Travelling on the train and recording the songs as we went allowed us to both visit places that were important 125 years ago when the lines were laid, but to also explore the viability of the railroad as a means of transport in the 21st century."

Henry adds: "The emergence of the railroad in America boasted of our might and sprawling enormity, yet signalled a deep desire for close community, connectivity. The songs that grew out of and alongside this innovation remain to tell this story of collective national character."

Bragg and Henry last worked together when the American produced the Englishman's 2013 album Tooth & Nail and they will reunite for two British tours, the first next month, the second next January, when they will perform songs from Shine A Light and plenty more.

Tickets for Bragg and Henry's York concert can be booked on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york